"Go on cleaning," said Boris; "this is some heretic function, and might sap our morality. We are volunteers, at any rate, as well as the best of good Catholics. We do not need unlicensed prayers. If you have quite done with that rag stick, lend it to me, Jorian!"
CHAPTER XVIII
CAPTAINS BORIS AND JORIAN PROMOTE PEACE
Now this is the report which Captains Boris and Jorian, envoys (very) extraordinary from the Prince and Princess of Plassenburg to the reigning Duchess of Hohenstein, made to their home government upon their return from the fords of the Alla.
They wrote it in collaboration, on the usual plan of one working and the other assisting him with advice.
Jorian, being of the rotund and complaisant faction, acquiesced in the proposal that he should do the writing. But as he never got beyond "To our honoured Lord and Lady, Hugo and Helene, these——" there needs not to be any particularity as to his manner of acting the scribe. He mended at a pen till it looked like a brush worn to the straggling point. He squared his elbows suddenly and overset the inkhorn. He daubed an entire folio of paper with a completeness which left nothing to the imagination.
Then he remembered that he knew where a secretary was in waiting. He would go and borrow him. Jorian re-entered their bedroom with a beaming smile, and the secretary held by the sleeve to prevent his escape. Both felt that already the report was as good as written. It began thus:—
"With great assiduity (a word suggested by the secretary) your envoys remembered your Highnesses' princely advice and command that we should involve ourselves in no warfare or other local disagreement. So when we heard that Hohenstein was to be invaded by the troops of the Prince of Courtland we were deeply grieved.
"Nevertheless, judging it to be for the good of our country that we should have a near view of the fighting, we left worthy and assured substitutes in our place and room——"